Tag: hp

The basic plot, which cannot be ignored even in the films, is that Harry, Hermione and Ron give up everything for their political struggle. They drop out of high school, they go illegal, defy the government, belong to an underground organization [The Order of the Phoenix], operate out of safe houses and forests and even raid offices of the government and banking offices. This is all done in principled opposition to the Dark Wizard Voldemort and a corrupt bureaucratized government that has been heavily infiltrated with his evil minions. This is revolutionary activity. But the movie version does not present it as such or emphasize these radical aspects of the plot, thereby entirely missing the dramatic sweep and action present in the first half of the last novel.

The novels recognize the importance of alternative media for political struggle. The mainstream press [The Daily Prophet] is shown as unreliable and unprincipled, eventually deteriorating into a fear-mongering propaganda machine for the Voldemort-controlled bureaucracy. For a while the alternative but above ground media [The Quibbler] publishes the real news, but it ceases to print after the daughter of the publisher is kidnapped. In the book, friends of Harry [Lee Jordan, with Fred and George Weasley as frequent guests] start broadcasting the real news from an underground radio station, encrypted with a password. This radio station becomes a critical link for the resistance, which is scattered and weak. Although we are treated to some radio broadcast updates in the movie, they are delivered by a disembodied and professional sounding voice, not our friends the Weasleys. This undermines the important message – a guiding principle behind the media coop – that in a serious situation it becomes necessary to produce your own media and not to rely on ‘professionals’.

The novel makes it clear that in this phase of the struggle the characters romantic lives take a backseat to their political activity, as Harry breaks up with the love of his life [Ginny Weasley] so as to avoid making her a target for Voldemort’s forces, who are known to use torture and kidnapping as tactics. The ‘love triangle’ that becomes the focus of the movie isn’t even really present in the books. In the books, the relationship between Harry and Hermione is totally platonic – Ron is shown as jealous, but the feeling is entirely without foundation. In the book Harry says to Ron: “I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me. It’s always been like that. I thought you knew” (pg 378, DH US Hardback). This conveys that men and women can be close comrades and friends without being involved romantically. But in the film, Harry and Hermione are shown dancing romantically, and Harry’s line to Ron about his brotherly feeling towards Hermione does not even make it into the film. This completely undermines the important message that jealousy is counter-productive and has toxic effects, which is an important feminist message for young people.

How Hollywood Defanged Potter’s Radical Politics  (via girl-germs)

Worth a repost

(via wolvensnothere)

HP is one of the most fundamentally anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, radical books in a WHILE. The books are incredibly diverse in race and gender, including villains. While everyone was screaming about Pullman, and hanging their hats on the witchcraft in HP, Rowling basically put out a roadmap of revolutiinary youth.

Everyone likes to pull the, “Deatheaters are Nazis,” subtext but if you look at the timeline of the text and publication, it’s pretty clear that politically, this is an England/Ireland/Scotland/Wales under Tory rule and in the midst of the Troubles & Thatcherism from the start, with subsequent books written and published in a post-9/11 world.

Rowling wrote the root, branch, and flower of politics and power creating death and despair, where love and unity by choice were the strongest powers. There are reasons for that.

(via carnivaloftherandom)

asheathes:

WIZARDING SCHOOLS AROUND THE WORLD: JAPAN

In a secluded area of Mount Hiei, shrouded in mist, the Japanese Institute for Magical Practices spirals gracefully into the sky. The school is a series of elegant pagodas built to impossible heights with a multitude of connecting bridges crisscrossing like a bird’s nest. On the ground is an elaborate garden with a sprinkling of ponds. A kaleidoscope of fish zigzag through the water, sometimes even taking to the air like birds due to rather peculiar abilities gained over time through overexposure to magic. Students often take immense pleasure in enchanting a cherry blossom downpour to trail people who have wronged them; the charm usually remains intact for well over a week unless a teacher takes pity upon the student and dispels the spell. While they have mastered wandless magic through the use of talismans, pockets of the Japanese wizarding community have slowly begun to adopt the use of wands following its rise in popularity all over the world, although wandless magic still takes precedence, and wands are more often tucked behind their ears or used to hold up their hair than to practice magic. 

asheathes:

WIZARDING SCHOOLS AROUND THE WORLD: INDIA

India’s Academy of Sorcery boasts an impressive display of flashy colours, from enchanted saris that shift colours sporadically throughout the day, to the lavishly painted exterior of the academy which is situated in a nondescript location along Ganges River. Due to the frightening rate at which the school’s ancient mango tree (jokingly nicknamed “Mammoth Mango Machine”) produces mangoes, students have to endure the perpetually evolving art of mango cuisine at least five days a week. Every year, to the students’ great enjoyment, classes are halted for Diwali to make time for various competitions that take place: firework flourishes and charms for upper-year students (bonus points if it doesn’t set any part of the school on fire), and lantern designing for lower-year students (use of animals, alive or dead, is forbidden).